Abstract
Extensive research on graph-based dynamics and control of multi-agent systems has successfully demonstrated control of robotic swarms, where each robot is perceived as an independent agent virtually connected by a network topology. The strong advantage of the network control structure lies in the decentralized nature of the control action, which only requires the knowledge of virtually connected agents. In this paper, we seek to expand the ideas of virtual network constraints to physical constraints on a class of tree-structured robots which we denote as single articulated robotic (SAR) systems. In our proposed framework, each link can be viewed as an agent, and each holonomic constraint connecting links serves as an edge. By following the first principles of Lagrangian dynamics, we derive a consensus-like matrix-differential equation with weighted graph and edge Laplacians for the dynamics of a SAR system. The sufficient condition for the holonomic constraint forces becoming independe